Govt works on strengthening dialysis services

Paidamoyo Chipunza Senior Health Reporter
Government is working on strengthening dialysis services in public health institutions amid concerns that available services were overwhelmed, forcing patients to seek assistance from the private sector where costs are beyond the reach of many.

Health and Child Care Minister Dr Obadiah Moyo told The Herald in a recent interview following repeated concerns by renal patients that available machines were not only inadequate to cover the whole country, but they constantly break down, compromising efficiency in service delivery.

“We are looking at improving our dialysis services in the whole country,” said Dr Moyo. “We need to upgrade the machines that we have. We need to have more units in each province so that people do not travel long distances to receive their treatment.”

Dr Moyo acknowledged that current costs of dialysis in the private sector were too high for ordinary Zimbabweans, prompting Government to intervene.

“The current costs of services are too high and Government has to come in and give as much support as possible,” he said. “We want to come up with a model — which has already been approved by Cabinet — where dialysis has been considered to be a condition that has to be subsidised.”

To achieve this, Government will soon be flighting a tender for partnerships with interested bidders.

Dialysis patients who spoke on condition of anonymity said dialysis units in public health institutions were overwhelmed.

In the private sector, dialysis costs range from $800 to $1 400 per session.

Those receiving dialysis services from Government institutions are getting free services after the scrapping of user fees last year.

A person with renal failure is recommended to have at least three sessions of dialysis per week.

Each session must be four-hours long while each machine should dialyse at least three patients per-day.

Apart from Parirenyatwa Hospital and Harare Central Hospital which have an average of 10 machines each, Mpilo, Marondera, Chinhoyi and Gweru hospitals also have dialysis machines, but all of them do not have more than five machines.